He’s “doing his best” to balance voting in the Senate to represent Kansas and his campaign for the presidency.

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., stressed that message three times this morning during a short conference call with Kansas media when asked about missing several Senate votes since the session.

“What I am trying to do is balance the work back-and-forth. Being in the U.S. Senate, being on campaign trail, I’m trying to do the best I can,” Brownback said.

He said other than the campaign he missed votes in January during his trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Visiting Greensburg to inspect damage of the tornado-ravaged Kansas city also caused him to miss votes, Brownback said.

The Kansas senator – who is polling with support of about 2 percent of voters nationally in the GOP race – insisted his presidential bid was going well and again called himself the “tortoise in the race” – one of his favorite lines from the campaign trail.

“It’s not a national race. It’s a race through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, so the effort is targeted and focused most in those areas,” Brownback said of the early caucus and primaries.

After Tuesday night’s debate performance in New Hampshire with nine other candidates, Brownback said he would introduce legislation today on dividing Iraq into three loosely federated states to help divide Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis and hopefully reduce violence there.

“We’ve go to get on the political track (in Iraq), and we don’t have a sufficient political solution from this administration,” Brownback said.